


We Are All Phoenixes

by Clementiaverborum



Category: Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Angst, Kink Meme, Multi, Sibling Incest, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-01
Updated: 2012-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-30 10:59:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/331027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clementiaverborum/pseuds/Clementiaverborum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU after Blood Rites: Lara "suggests" that Thomas and Harry take Justine with them out of the White Court. And what follows from that is the rising from the ashes. Written for the Dresden Files kinkmeme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Are All Phoenixes

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for the following prompt on the Dresden Files kinkmeme: After the events of Blood Rites, Lara tells Thomas to take invalid Justine with him, despite them being unable to touch each other. This results, eventually, in a Harry sandwich, and the most awkward, beautiful, intimate, careful sex Harry has ever had. (The title of the prompt was "We're going to need a bigger bed," from which I took one scene in the fic).

Characters/Pairings: Thomas/Harry/Justine. Mentions of past Thomas/Lara. Warnings: Incest, angst and trauma. AU (obviously) after _Blood Rites_. 

\-------------------------------

We brought her back to my apartment. What else could we do?

Well. Maybe I should say that _I_ brought _them_ back to my apartment. Because Thomas sure as hell wasn't in any shape to help.

The pain in my left hand was getting to be a problem. I didn't have time to brew a potion, and I knew I couldn't concentrate on helping Justine and my brother until I had _something_ to dull the edge of the pain. So I gritted my teeth, reminded myself that the world was full of bastards and I was one sometimes, and shook Thomas until his eyes focused on something other than Justine.

"Harry?" His voice was blurred with shock, and he tried to fall off the side of the couch I'd placed him on. Justine was on the other side, draped with a blanket so Thomas wouldn't accidentally touch her bare skin. Her silver hair hung over the side of the couch. I looked at her and then away, and my eyes shut. I worked them back open. 

"Thomas," I said, "I know you have some money. I need--I'll need some of it for painkillers, man. For me, and for Justine, if she can take them." I vaguely remembered Justine's recital of all the shit in her life, and I didn't know if painkillers might be a no-no. "And for you," I added, staring at the places the chains had cut into his wrists.

"It doesn't matter." Thomas let his head roll back onto the couch again and shut his eyes. His skin was the color of a scraped bone, and it had no more warmth than a shell when I put my hand against it. I shook him again, but he didn't respond.

Beside me, Mouse whined and leaned against my ankle, then scrambled up with a bark that sounded like a mew and landed on Thomas's chest. He pressed down with his paws, for all the world like he was doing doggie CPR, and Thomas lifted his head and stared at him. Then a shaky smile invaded his face, and he reached out and caressed Mouse's back.

I gritted my teeth, and waited. The pain from my hand made me want to smash things, or blow things up, or blow myself up, preferably taking Chateau Raith with me on the way. But sometimes I'm patient if not smart, and I waited.

Thomas hesitated, glanced once at Justine, and then nodded at me and stood up. "You're right," he said, though I wasn't sure if he was talking to me or Mouse, really. "I'm not going to help her by just sitting here and not doing anything. I'll go get them." 

He took off. I slumped down on the couch and stared at Justine for a few seconds. The blanket moved up and down, maybe once in each ten seconds. That was the only way I knew she was still alive. 

Thomas had been resting his hand on her blanket-covered knee, but I didn't think I should do that. I leaned my head back and started talking instead. 

"I think that Thomas should get a job as a model, don't you? I'm sure he'd be good at it. He'd look good in a _towel_. One of _my_ towels. The one with Spiderman battling green death rays on it and half the cloth gone. Don't tell him I said that." I snorted as I thought of the way Thomas would probably interpret any compliments on his appearance. "And I could, I don't know, take up lighting practice fires for the volunteer fire department or something. Or teaching Boy Scouts how to roast marshmallows. Did I tell you about the time I fought a chlorofiend? And yeah, that's what it's called, it sounds better..."

Mouse jumped up in my lap and curled up with the tiniest of snores. I let my hand lie on his back and closed my eyes, babbling everything I could think of, trying not to think about tomorrow, just today, just now, just the moment that Justine needed.

\-------------------------------

They were trying to hide it. But either they were really bad at it, or else I'd grown a little more observant since the time Papa Raith tried to rule the porn industry.

Thinking about it, maybe I had, given that I had all those days when I was just sitting there watching Justine comb her silver hair and helping her when she asked, or watching the marks on Thomas's skin fade as he climbed in and out of my ratty old clothes...

Nah. Whatever that was, it wasn't me getting more observant. I knew that.

But I did see the way they would reach out to touch each other. Justine would come up behind Thomas in her wheelchair as he stood at the counter chopping up vegetables for dinner and start to rest her hand on his hip. Then she would pull it back and lower it, blushing. Thomas would close his eyes--I could see that much from the side--and hold his breath before he went on with the chopping. If he said anything, I couldn't hear it under the squeak of Justine's chair wheels as she turned around and left.

Or Justine would fall asleep on the couch--she slept in the bed, while Thomas had the couch and I had a blow-up mattress on the floor--and Thomas would stand and extend his arms to carry her into the bedroom. And he'd stop, and he'd look so frustrated that I would have to turn my head away and pretend to be fascinated by the shapes in the fire until he sat down and said, in this high, brittle voice, "Harry, Justine's asleep again."

We went for walks-and-wheels in the sunlight as Justine got stronger and my hand felt better, all three of us. (Well, there were four if you counted Mouse, but he had a tendency to get bored with our slow pace, race ahead, and then come yipping back to us to show us a new smudge of dirt on his nose). Thomas's hand would dangle down beside the wheelchair, and Justine would look at it. Thomas would look at her looking at it, and if their eyes caught, they exchanged a look of such intensity I was surprised it didn't leave both of them jerking and twitching as if a lightning bolt had been there. 

So, you know. That kind of added to the misery of the whole "your hand is fucked up and we should amputate it so you don't have a lump of scorched burger dangling off your wrist for the rest of your life" situation. At least Thomas had paid off Kincaid. I didn't want to think about what my life would have been like if I'd still owed him.

Murphy stopped by now and then to see how we were getting along, and each time gave Justine this stare and me this complex expression. I just shrugged back at her. I knew the circumstances weren't ideal, but what else could we do? Leaving Justine there was out of the question, at least for Thomas. And seeing the expression Lara wore right before she started her hostile invasion of Papa Raith-land, I didn't think it was a good idea to rely on Lara to protect her. It might have happened, sure. And I might have woken up tomorrow to find that all the Denarians had given up torture and evil to pursue the rescue of fluffy orphan kittens. It wasn't out of the realm of _possibility_.

But anyway. I saw all that. And though in some ways I'd paid as high a price as anyone to get Thomas and Justine out of there, every day I saw how much higher it could have been. And at least my hand was burned because of my own brilliant-stupid decisions, not because my father had tortured me from the time I was a baby or because I was nearly drained to death by a boyfriend who couldn't touch me now.

So I thought about it, and I thought about it, and I thought about it, and I talked to Bob about it and brewed some potions that didn't work out and learned how to use my left hand for a few things again, and I thought about it some more.

It wasn't until the day we met with Lara that the plan came clear in my head, though.

\-------------------------------

"You look terrible, Thomas."

I found myself bristling and lifting one hand as if I would hurl a fireball at Lara before I considered what I was doing. Thomas reached over without looking at me, grabbed my wrist, and forced my hand down on the bench again. We were meeting in Hyde Park, because it wasn't a territory where either the White Council or the White Court had a home base that was too close, and that was the best we could do right now.

"So nice of you to be concerned, dearest sister," Thomas murmured, and then leaned his head back against the bench and closed his eyes. 

I gave him a sidelong glance. As cruel as Lara's words were, I had to admit they did have some basis in reality. His skin looked like it was made of chalk and would flake off if you scraped at it. His eyes, whenever he looked at me, were a watery grey that could spill over. When he looked at Justine, they brightened, but only with anguish. I knew he was feeding somewhere, in small sips, to keep himself from starving, but not where or when. He left the apartment for "runs," and I let him go, because there was no way that I wanted to get in his way when he was looking that, and someone had to stay with Justine.

I glanced back at Lara and surprised a sharp look on her face, one fingertip resting on her red lips. Of course she cleared up her expression when she saw me looking at her, but it had been there.

Weird as it was, I thought she really _was_ concerned about Thomas. In a vampire way, of course, meaning she wouldn't risk her pride or her position in the White Court or any real money or favors to cure him, but still. That was a _way_.

Lara took the nearest bench, smoothing her short black skirt over long legs that had the proper color of white for a lust vampire. This was weird, too, but: looking at her, I didn't feel the smallest flash of desire. I blinked. Probably just my tiredness and the pain from my left hand, I thought. I _knew_ I hadn't stopped being interested.

"Thomas," Lara said quietly. "Do you remember what we did when you were nineteen?"

Thomas's eyes snapped open, and now, if the color in them was going to spill out, it was only going to be as death rays. He sat up and hissed, "Lara, we agreed _never_ to mention that again."

Lara smiled. "And at one time, I agreed never to go against Daddy," she said, barely moving her lips. "Agreements are broken as they need to be, Thomas. We could do it again. It's not always as... _satisfying_ with a sibling, but it would give you something to live for."

I stared at them, blinking from one face to the other and wondering what they were talking about. It couldn't be what it sounded like--

Then I remembered this was the White Court, and what Papa Raith had done to his daughters, and shuddered a little. Yeah, it could. It really could.

Thomas held up his right hand, all his fingers spread out. I thought he was going to give Lara a list of five reasons he'd never fuck her again, but instead, he folded them down into a fist and said, "This is the only thing waiting for you if you ever come near me like that again, Lara, I swear. Or Justine. Or Harry." He turned his eyes on me, and they had a strange glow in them. 

You could call it brotherly, maybe. But that wouldn't be the right word. _Possessive_ was probably better.

I gulped and, because it's the way I handle dangerous situations, opened my big mouth. "Hey, Thomas, I'm a big boy, I can make up my own mind--"

Thomas leaned in until his nose rested against mine and I couldn't fully see his face. But I could see those burning silver eyes, oh yes.

"And I'm your _big brother_ ," he said, dragging the words across me like Lara had dragged her fingernails up my skin. " _No_."

"Woof," I said weakly, but I was reeling. As Thomas pulled away, said something cutting to Lara that I didn't bother to listen to, and got up to walk away, I looked at Lara, sure I was flushing.

But she _smiled_ at me. And it looked a lot more genuine than any smile I'd ever seen her give, except maybe the night she took over the White Court.

"A pleasure doing pleasure with you, Wizard Dresden," she murmured, rising to her feet and bowing her head. "As always."

She left, and I didn't even watch her heels and her ass swaying. Okay, not much. 

I was thinking instead, about the way she looked pleased and the way she thought she'd accomplished something. Well, getting Thomas to flare up instead of lie around, sure, but--

And then I saw it. The way that I could perk Thomas up, and cheer him up, and let him have Justine back, in a way.

If I had guts enough to do it.

_The question isn't guts, Harry_ , I thought, draping my hand across my eyes. _It's how much crazy you have._

But the idea was there now, and it wouldn't leave me, and in the end, I knew I was going to do it. Because there was Thomas, and there was Justine, and then there were my own hangups. 

In a contest between them, I always knew which was more important.

\-------------------------------

So now that I'd made the decision, there was really only putting it into play to do.

Which turned out to be _much harder_ than I had suspected it would be, even after seeing the way Thomas's eyes had gleamed at me in the park.

Then again, how exactly do you say to your White Court vampire brother, "I know you can't touch Justine and you're sad about that and I don't really have a solution, but what about if your wizard brother, who you don't know at all, gets in between you and we try to have sex that way?"

Yeah. That would only end up with Thomas's hands around my throat about the tenth or eleventh word. When it came to Thomas and Justine, silence just pervaded the apartment. They were there, and I saw them, and they didn't try to hide what they were feeling, but we didn't talk about it. Not that way.

But of course neither of them was going to save my ass and come up with some way to say it, because neither of them was _that_ stupid. That left it up to me to open my big mouth and mess things up.

As usual.

\-------------------------------

 

I waited until Thomas was out, running or feeding or whatever it was he was doing to keep himself alive. Justine sat curled up in a corner of my couch, the way she did whenever she wasn't in her wheelchair or in bed, watching the fire as if it was a TV. Her eyes were clearer now, her face a little more full, and she seemed to have grown into wearing the silver hair. But she still didn't talk a lot.

I cleared my throat. Justine twitched her head in my direction, and I decided it was the best invitation I was going to get. "Justine, what, um, do you think should happen next?"

Justine blinked at me, her eyes large and hazy, but getting less hazy as I watched. "What do you mean?"

I took a deep breath and stared at my hands. I thought I could say this if I could just get all the way through it without being interrupted, but I knew that wasn't going to happen. So I had to make it sound as good as I could in as few words as possible.

"It's just, I think there's a way you and Thomas could _sort of_ touch, you know? If we were in bed and I was in the middle, and you were on either side of me, and--" I saw Justine's mouth opening, and sped up, but she didn't try to say anything. Probably her jaw was dangling at my audacity. Well, that was better than the slap across the face I'd assumed I was going to get by this time. "Anyway, it could sort of work, you know? And that way you could be together. Sort of. Um. I could close my eyes or something? I don't know, it's an idea, because I hate to see you and Thomas being torn apart by this, and something has to change, and..."

I trailed off. I honestly hadn't expected to talk that much, and I had to give Justine a chance to speak, after all.

Justine continued to stare at me. Then she looked away, and I swallowed. It felt as though someone had withdrawn the pin that was going to drive me into a collecting board.

"I'm so tired of people making sacrifices for me," Justine whispered. "And this would just be another of them."

"For who?" I asked, frowning at her. "For you? Then of course we don't do it. But I don't think it would be for Thomas, not really." The way my brother's eyes burned when he looked at her, I doubted he would give up any chance to be close to her. The main problem was keeping him from strangling _me_ for touching her.

"For _you_ ," Justine said, and scowled at me, her eyes brighter than I'd seen them since we brought her home. "Because you're only doing this because you want to help us, and not because you want to sleep with us or anything."

I fumbled, and flushed, and mumbled, and finally said, "Look, Justine, I'm going to show you something, all right? Because it's better than trying to tell you."

Justine eyed me frostily, but nodded.

I leaned forward and kissed her. 

Her lips were colder than I expected, and her hands fell open on the couch as though she'd let go of some high rope. But then they roamed up and settled on my shoulders, and she was gasping into my mouth, and her mouth was open when I pulled back and her eyes were looking at me in wonder.

"See?" I said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as gently as I could. "It's not going to be a hardship for _me_."

"And what about me?"

That was Thomas's voice, coming from the doorway. I shivered, and then I stood up and walked toward him. Action before thought. It was what I did best, right?

Thomas stood there with his arms folded, his hair as perfect as ever, even though he hadn't combed it that morning. It just looked shaggy and soft, and I wanted to run my fingers through it. I reached up and did that, dragging my hand down so that my nails were on his face, and Thomas opened his mouth and stared at me like Justine had.

I grinned at him. Sometimes it was neat surprising my big brother. 

I kissed him, and his lips were a lot warmer than Justine's. And if I stopped listening to the part of me that was shrieking _He's a man! A male! With a dick! Like yours!_ , or at least decided that it really said something about me that I was thinking that instead of _He's your brother!_ , then it was nice.

Then Thomas wrapped his arms around me, and leaned on me, so I had to stagger to take his weight.

And it became more than nice. It became something that lit fireworks behind my eyes and candles in my brain. I was gasping when I finally pulled away from him and put my hands on his arms to settle myself.

Thomas's eyes glittered like stars as he looked from me to Justine, the first time since the confrontation with Lara in the park that I'd seen him look alive. Then he nodded to me, and held out his hand to Justine, who wrapped hers in a fold of the blanket before she lifted it to touch his.

"I want this," Thomas said. He looked down my body, and smiled. "And I can see you do, too."

I swallowed shakily and grinned at him. "Yeah. I do."

\-------------------------------

This was the way we did it:

Carefully.

Thomas had walked into my bedroom, given the bed there one look, and went away shaking his head. I don’t know how he had enough money to do it, or maybe he used a few White Court connections (it wouldn’t surprise me to know that there’s whole _businesses_ built on just constructing luxury beds and sex toys for the House of Raith), but we ended up with a huge bed shaped like a wooden shell, practically overlapping the walls of my bedroom.

Thomas got the sheets for it, too, soft and luxurious and bright as sin against Justine’s skin and hair when we eased her into it. Thomas made sure that his hands stayed on her clothed arms only, biting his lip whenever he had to turn her in a certain direction.

Justine looked up at him, and laughed for the first time since everything went down. Then she sat up and shifted herself so that she lay against the pillows. When she tilted her head back and started unbuttoning her blouse, well, I knew _Thomas_ wasn’t the only one practically sitting up and drooling.

“I don’t always need your help,” she said, and flung the shirt into the corner, followed by her bra. I didn’t think I’d ever seen a woman take off a bra so fast, so intent on getting to the main event. I was all for her doing it all the time, though, por encouragey les autors or whatever the phrase is.

Justine’s breasts were pale, plump, and perfect. I was kneeling down in front of her before I thought about it, and I glanced once at her for permission, but she was already nodding, so I bent down and kissed the left one.

Justine sighed, and her fingers grabbed my hair and held me so tightly I thought it might make me pass out. Not that there would have been anything wrong with that, passing out in a puddle of bliss, but Justine pulled me away and whispered, “We have to make sure that this works, remember?”

“Was there someone else here?” I said to the air, because sometimes I can be an asshole like that, and turned around to give my brother a shit-eating grin.

My very, very _naked_ brother.

His skin glowed more than Justine’s did, his hair hanging around his shoulders as though she’d just finished running her fingers through _it_ , too, and his hands, slender and strong and confident, reached out for me. I went with it, shivering as they touched me, skittering up my sides, and then drifting under my shirt and finding my ribs. I was shivering for a different reason as Thomas bent down and kissed me.

Pleasure flashed through my mouth, and then through my back, where Justine’s hands had come to rest, less than an inch away from Thomas’s.

Together, they undressed me, though at one point there was a problem with my boots that made me surface from the haze to laugh. But we got those off, and the jeans, and the underwear (it was Batman this time), and the rest of Justine’s clothes, which I found out were still there when I reached back and tried to slide a hand between her legs. 

And then…

Then, we were careful. That’s all.

\-------------------------------

Justine lay down on her back in the middle of the bed. I had worried about lying on top of her because of her injuries and told her we could do this some other way if she wanted, but she gave me a calm smile that I swear was _luminous_ somehow, as if she was the vampire, and said, “This is what I want.”

So I was on top of her, and Thomas was behind me, shifting around and grunting like an impatient bull. At least I had found _one_ thing that didn’t make him seem graceful and elegant, I thought smugly.

Then I felt his hands on my hips, and the way that his slick fingers slipped into me, and I decided that I was wrong. My head lolled to the side and my eyes shut without permission. Thomas’s free hand smoothed up and down my hip, and he chuckled into my ear.

“Thomas.”

That was Justine. I opened my eyes and found that she was gazing up at me—no, beyond me, at him. And his chuckle cut off, and although I didn’t look over my shoulder because I couldn’t quite bear to, at the moment, I was sure he was gazing back at her, too, heartsick and lovesick.

I coughed and rose up toward Thomas’s fingers, angling myself gently between Justine’s legs at the same time. “We’re here,” I said, a stupid thing to say, but it made them pay attention to what was happening _right now,_ and that was the important thing.

Thomas paused, and then his fingers sank back into me and twisted. I was still gasping from the impact of that when Justine gave me another of those surprisingly sweet smiles and murmured, “Yes, we are,” and reached down to ease me into her.

_That_ had an impact, too, in the same way a meteorite striking earth would. I clung to her, gasping, and remembered to reach a hand down to try and make it good for her too. Justine’s eyes were closed, her head tilted back as she moved on me, her hands clutching my arms so tightly that I knew I would have bruises in the morning. 

Thomas shifted above me, and thrust into me, and his hands settled on my arms right above Justine’s.

Sensation flared to life inside me, around me, where Thomas’s warm and shining skin brushed my back, where Justine’s breasts brushed my chest. I bent my head down to kiss her, and Justine let her eyes flutter open and smiled at me. I kissed her for a long time as I thrust, carefully, but more let myself be guided and directed by them both, doing what they wanted to do.

Then I turned around and kissed Thomas, trying as hard as I could to give him the taste of Justine, and of her smile.

Thomas went utterly still above me, which made me more aware of how hot and hard he was inside me, how large. I caught my breath, and my body shivered, and Thomas laid a hand along the side of my jaw and kissed me, so slowly and so deeply that I understood the message had been delivered.

And more than that. Thomas wanted to show me that it was more than that, that the messenger had been accepted, too.

So after that, I hung between them and let them move me, in such a slow dance that it made all those ballroom steps I’d learned seem like tangos. Justine let her hands roam my chest, touching my nipples and making me let out a shout of surprise. She giggled, and Thomas snorted into my ear, his hands equally restless on my back. I knew it wasn’t a coincidence that they were both drawing essentially the same patterns.

Thomas breathed into my ear, and the hair stood up there. Justine did the same thing near my mouth, and I could feel their breath brushing past each other, the nearest to a kiss they could come.

_Come._ Oh, I shouldn’t have thought the word. I twitched inside Justine, and she smiled and caught me up, riding me faster now, letting me thrust when I had to.

“You’re fine,” she whispered, and just when I thought I was probably going to cry, she turned her head to the side and kissed the scarred ruin of my left hand. 

And I _knew_ I was crying when I came, and when Justine shuddered in my embrace and arched her head into the pillow and squeezed me _hard_ inside and out, and when Thomas dug his fingers into my shoulders and raked down and roared into my ear. 

As we collapsed like a slow-motion fall into the pillows, Justine reached up and let her fingers linger on my shoulder blades. Thomas’s could have brushed hers if he moved them, but he didn’t. He lingered there instead, staring, and I turned my head to the side to give them the privacy they deserved.

It didn’t actually last long. Thomas coaxed me back and into a kiss that went rumbling through me like another orgasm, and Justine laughed when I whispered dirty things in her ear and parted her legs so I could put my mouth to good use. Thomas leaned down to watch me while I did it, and his hair cast its shadow over Justine’s thighs. Justine trembled as if she could come from that alone.

I closed my eyes and made it as good as I could for her, while Thomas reached down and stroked me with one hand and himself with another, and although _I_ wasn’t a super-strong sex vampire or an incredibly sexy woman and couldn’t come a second time in one night, it felt as if I were with them when they did, feeling the tremors play through them and around them.

With them. Not simply in between them.

\-------------------------------

That wasn’t the end. But it was a beginning, and a damn good one.

We might never get back to exactly what we’d been before. But we could rise. And we were _going_ to.

You can’t keep a good woman, wizard, or vampire down.


End file.
